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Learning Becomes Almost Effortless

An excerpt from an upcoming article in BARKS from The Guild. Why do I love teaching tricks and why do my dogs love learning them? Why would you want to teach your dog tricks? What are tricks, anyway? How old should your dog if you want them to learn how to do tricks? How do I teach them? ...

30 Reasons to Join the Pet Professional Guild

                        You may be wondering what exactly are the benefits of joining a member organization such as PPG so we've decided to help you out by listing a mere 30 of them. Whether you're a seasoned pet ...

Do Cats Really Like Music?

By Jane Ehrlich According to a study by Snowdon et al., ‘cats may ignore human music—but they are highly responsive to music written especially for them’ according to their study published in applied Animal Behavior Science.  Professor Charles Snowdon, of the University of Wisconsin, ...

Teaching Thinking Dogs

A study that was published recently by an Oregon State University researcher compared wolves with dogs … and many people reading the conclusions appear to have understood the study to mean that we teach dogs to be stupid. The study tested pet dogs’, shelter dogs’, and wolves’ ability to ...

Will Your Halloween Be Fun or Scary?

Halloween can be a fun time for the entire family, including the family dog, or it can be a scary, and sometimes even a dangerous situation. Think about it for a moment from your dog's perspective. Loud, screaming, running monsters, rushing up to the door, ringing the doorbell, screaming and ...

Is Planet Earth Flat?

Well the simple answer to that is NO! Of course we know that. If anybody asked you that question nowadays you’d probably be very amused. Why do I ask this on a dog training blog I hear you say? Well, I have been asked this question so much lately on social media, training consults and ...

Keeping Your Social Butterfly Social

When my wife I adopted Buddha he was a two-year old Labrador with no training and serious case of separation anxiety, thanks to a puppyhood that was disrupted by misfortune beyond his control. His foster family had just begun working on his SA and suggested that Buddha could become a therapy ...

Accidental Punishment

I charged straight into a positive punishment scenario by accident recently. I’ve been somewhat in the training doldrums lately, probably because I am putting so much energy into finishing my book. I have several training activities that I fall back on when I don’t have much energy. They ...